well imagine a huge sheet of rubber thats stretched flat and your tabla and the other insturments you play with have a frame of beat that is placed over this sheet that is comprehensible by the normal human mind, ie. 182 beats per minute is a timed frame we can understand. this frame sets down centers where the beat is enphasized and cuases and rubber sheet to sink in a little bit which gives them rythmic gravity, the plane of beat travels a certain way straight through all the frame that is set which gives us the pattern of a beat. When the beats are percived by the players and listeners as the same distance apart, which they are when you play(tempo) then it creates an up and down pattern like vally hill vally hill over and over. the hills are midway between each beat this means every strike that you play inbetween these beats of rhythmic gravity, gravitate either back toward the last beat or foward to the next beat. those directly in the middle are on the '&' of a beat, like when counting 1 & 2 & 3 & 4. the numbers are the vallys and the ands are the hills, anything between them have gravity toward the beats. Behind all this your right, there is no time, only you and infinate constants of Tas tins Dha Ges, all the strokes could happen anytime.

My last conclusion now: behind the time there isn�t anything, not even any imagination. It just happens. You ARE in it, and you MAKE it at the same moment. You hear it, you FEEL it and you KNOW it too. Any kind of imagination -whatever it is-, just helps you to make it. It�s living, and going ahead continually, even without as. All we can do is to go with it. But we can not create it. (That was the mistake of the western music history and the fatal mistake of the music education today. europa, hungary)

You are kidding aren�t you? I just want to know, what is the real basic of playing tabla, of playing indian music. Not the virtual, as any imagination. Has the player �time� to imagine anything? Has the tabla player pictures or thoughts in his mind? I don�t know. Do you know that? Who knows that? I�m just pretty alone with my tabla. And I think if you exactly KNOW all the time, where you are exactly in the cycle � in the virtual room of sounds maybe � there isn�t any possibility to keep anything �more� in your brain. I guess you are just living there alone.

OK seriously (I'll regret this), all performers whether musicians, public speakers, or what have you, exist in both the present and a few seconds in the future simultaneously when they're doing their thing. Its like anticipation of what's coming next while knowing where you're at now. This is something that has to be practiced. Yes, time does exist in music where ever its from. If you're having trouble, I recommend using a metronome or something else to count time for you as you play. Then you can learn how to play cycles within cycles. Don't know how else to explain this......

If you are asking about the solid basics to tabla playing. I think the basics are keeping a solid laya during your theka to support the lead instrument. When you are doing a solo estion it must be appropiate, dependig on what the lead instrument is doing. This is however the same with all music. It is essential to support the other people you are playing with. This to me is the what makes a brilliant musician. No matter what your thoughts are etc. Nobody likes someone to take over. Also the basics are the clear execution of each stroke. This ofcourse is a fundamental that should never be ignored. It is better to play slow and clear than fast and unclear. You say you feel alone with your tabla. In some ways I understand what you mean. I live in Brighton in England and I don't know anybody who plays Indian music. So my study of the music and the inner joy from the music is felt purely alone. There is not a person I know in England who is into such music. I'm starting to loose the thread of my origonal point so i should halt. Bye bye.

In my head when I play tabla alone I am thinking of the bols and fingerings and practicing correcting my muscles so they have the best tone and the best execution. When I play with the sitar player, I am concentrating more on keeping in the cycle, supporting, then ornamenting the music. If you guys enjoyed that first theory, just wait, one day Ill explain theorys on rhythmic tension and release.

also no HEY i drew a diagram of the tabla players head, and the sets of beats he is going to play formulate in his mind, like when you start playing tereketetakatakatere... and so on, you know how long you will continue your tereketetaktaka pattern, so that far ahead is planned out. other than that the tabla player might have his rela planned for the peak of the raga or solo, things like that. But those bols in the nearest future are the only ones in his mind at the time. after that it passes through his hands and out into audibility, where its pervieced by the audience and the players besides the tabla. So the tabla has that going on.

And say Allah rakha and Ravi back in the day, Ravi could sense the beggining of the pattern when Allah played it, then they both had the short pattern that was going to happen in their minds. So it was like Ravi was sharing in Allahs plan, and the other way around of course.

As a musician you are aware of time indeed.All what you do is going to that one important point of time...the sam.The greatest fear of a tablaplayer is to lose that feeling of time. Reaching the sam to early or to late brings the music out of balance. But the beauty is you can feel the time when musicians are close to reach the sam. You know when the sam is coming although it is still in the future. The time after that point is still empty.But also you are NOT aware of time when you practise. One hour can be very short then.

Agreed Swara. The sam (downbeat) is the pillar upon which the house stands. All must end the cycle on it, and then begin again to head to the next sam. If you watch and listen closely to a sitar/tabla duet, you notice that they play off each other, and each depends on the other. Nobody likes to be "stepped on". Remember the Supremes? They were tight until it became Dianna Ross and the Supremes. Broke up. Same thing with the Beatles when Paul began to run the show. OK, I'm off topic (and showing my age), but in any case, time is important to ALL music, whether solo or group!

Steve: got one fellow from Kent and one from north London over on the sitar forum. Don't know if you live near them or not, but maybe take a look. If think they would love to hook up with a tablaji.

Good point Russ and Swar,People don't get vague in time while playing the tabla . fix the beat then play either 1,2,3 per beat or 9 per beat whatever but the time should be very clear . Even when it sounds like zakir is stretching som beats per measure if you went back and checked you see that maybe one time it would be exactly 3 beats per measure next maybe 4 but not vague. And that goes for sitarist to. I knew one that thought they could just meend the notes however they felt and that's a big mistake always be in some tiime or another 3, 5 whatever.http://www.angelfire.com/music3/tabla

Tanks for the impulses. All that was very, very helpful - first of all the hint to �that one important point of time...the sam�. Tank you Swara.My last conclusion now;--): Tabla playing works like the language, so far it is a language. And just like a language, it dos not need any instance of understanding (any imagination or any loop of intellect). Quasi i have in my mind, what I want to say.

Here there is an excerpt: "Learning that I was a drummer, Alla Rakha invited me back to his hotel room for tea. I brought my pad and sticks with me, and I also happened to bring along a curious little device known as a tri-nome. A tri-nome is a metronome that can keep track of three rhythmic cycles. Each cycle has a different sound. You can set it so the three beats will all weave in and out of each other, circling around in endless loops, and every time the loops intersect with each other a bell will bong, indicating what is known as "the One."

The One�the alpha and the omega, the end and the beginning of the rhythmic cycle.

Alla Rakha was amused by the tri-nome. Picking up my pad, he began to demonstrate a rhythm game to me. He beat out a count to ten and then called out a number, which I then tried to place on top of his next ten beats. For instance, when he called "twelve," I tried to lay twelve beats down within the span of his ten, so that his last beat and my last beat would meet�at the One.

With this simple game, Alla Rakha destroyed my beliefs about rhythm. Rhythm was just time, I realized, and time could be carved up any way you wanted.

We did eleven over nine and twelve over eight and fifteen over thirteen. He showed me the obvious truth that twelve bars of eleven was the same as eleven bars of twelve.

He held onto my hand as I beat so I could feel how time was infinitely elastic. He made me feel what four felt like, then while I was doing four with my left hand, he showed me how I could put five into that four with my right hand.

Even beating on the pad with my fingers I felt it. Every time you crossed at the One, the energy shot up a little. There was a little pop! of something like adrenaline, only in your head.

I returned from that hotel room feeling as if I'd been shown the Golden Tablets."Bye

Fragments:Music is the product of movements, so to keep for example �regularity� in your music, you have to clean your physical movements, your consciousness of your muscle and of your weight. The main point isn�t to strike (move down), but to lift one part of your body, your fingers: its (down and up) have to happen simultaneously. There is just a change of �touch� with the surface of Tabla. And we have an instinct for it, for feel a change of �touch�, for example by walking. We have to take advantage of this instinct.And now what I wont to say: the changes between the upper arms in >terekete< happen in lowest part of our spine - from right to left on re, from left to right on ke.That could be for instance behind the time, better to say in the time: your body, the changes in it. Is there anyone, who has felt the same?

There is no Time.. only this constant moment in which we live in, our mind percives history, but it does not exist in Time, neither does the future, it is also only a trik of the mind, nothing exsists out side of this moment.

...there will come a time when you will be more worried about upper arms, spines, right to left, left to right, black holes, vanishing time anf god knows what instead of your tabla playing!! Keep it sane, in time and stress-free! Try to relax your muscles periodicaly while playing. Be aware of it and then when you are good at it, then try to send the same messages of relaxation to the cells in your hand, arms and wherever you can/need. As I said, keep it sane and in time and lots of practice!

My mind is totally blank at the moment but that clip comes from that Mickey Hart book about drumming . The Allah Rakha chapter is the best part of the book , but the whole book is incredibly inspiring for drummers.I can't remember the name of the book maybe someone else does

Russ (Sep 03, 2002 12:35 p.m.):Nice one, Ed. As Einstein said, time is relative. Its a man-made invention to explain events in relation to each other. No wonder Einstein was a musician too! Wonder if he ever tried tabla?

That article was from that Mickey Hart book which is very inspiring , I can't remember the name of the book but the whole Allah Rakha chapter is interesting like that .

By the way speaking of time since Zakir said he's sees time visually like a clock when he is playing. Wouldn't it be cool if someone could write a a visual audio program where it would create sort of a clock then you could give the clock any number and set the speed . This would visually appear in the program then you could create a second clock and give it any number. The hand on both clocks would move at the same speed but the numbers or notches would be different depending on how many you input . each time the clock would pass a number or notch it would make a tone and both clocks would make different tones this way you could see how different beats over layed on each other. The one would always be at the top of the clocks and make a special tone. I thought of that just now and I'm not even stoned . Any programmers out there?

Ya thats a great link from ZakirI think this part, it really makes you think."I visualize them. It's a riot for me. It's like sitting on a rollercoaster and going through the dips and climbs and curves and drops. For me it's a playland. Like time to be in an area where you're going to drop from 30,000 feet and parachute down to Earth. Or bungie jump. And those are ranges of improvising in rhythm cycles. You see a pattern emerging, and it's going by like a shinkansen, and you want to grab onto it and hold on and be part of that experience of that pattern and that speed and that tempo. Or sometimes a pattern is like an anaconda. But the fun part is to be able to sit on its head and ride it or catch it as it goes along and put a knife in its neck. It's visually like that for us. You see drummers when they're playing, they look up, mouth open or eyes wide, or eyes shut in concentration. It's because it's a vision, not abstract or invisible. It's all there, and they're going to ride it. It's like they're hang-gliding and they can see the air pockets. This is why a drummer can be thinking rhythms. When I'm singing rhythms, I am not playing it but my mind is projecting a visual image. So I am able to see the rise and fall and measure in that sense. "

apeiron (Jan 30, 2003 05:28 a.m.):

back to my question: the changes between the upper arms in >terekete< happen in lowest part of our spine - from right to left on re, from left to right on ke. Is there anybody, who has felt the same?

Not for me I guess when my hands are really working right it is all very much in the hands.